I like these Germans. They are a fearfully diseased people, but still I like them. Their disease is an incurable honesty. Now, there is Mr. Lisfeldt. I regard Mr. Lisfeldt as the best man in the world, except Maj. Burr P. Noland.

earlier and in some respects still better Italian school (Palestrina and Allegri, for example), when profound faith and profound feeling went hand in hand, and to present them in the spirit as nearly as possible in which they were first delivered by the inspired composers, that was the duty of the choir, and that was their whole duty. Nor were the hymns and psalms to which the mass of hearers had been accustomed from childhood by any means neglected. A standing reward of five thousand dollars for a first-rate devotional composition failed, after ten years' trial, to produce anything worthy of the name, the committee withholding the reward all that time, after which it was withdrawn. I suppose the scientific spirit had killed the sacred spirit [Some contradiction here of views before given. But between diction and contradiction somewhere lies the truth most likely], or else that mankind in general, out-evolving the musicians, got so far ahead that the latter could never catch up, so that even the "music of the future " failed to satisfy the cravings of the people of the present, who thereupon fell back perforce upon the good old music of the past.

At first there was a large attendance of the curious; afterwards the excellence of the music drew crowds of women and children, and music-lovers of the male sex ; but by degrees the men of business who contemned Cornelia Cathedral and the mode of its worship, dropped in on their way to or from their offices and shops to rest awhile, and "just to look, you know." It was so cool within the thick stone

walls in summer and so comfortable in winter. Then the high vaulted roof — yes, the whole interior was so beautiful, and the solemn stillness so refreshing after the bustle and worry of work, after the dirty, soul-dirtying work of making money. And ere long these men of business contrived to get to the Cathedral in time to hear a little music. Bashful enough in the beginning, ashamed indeed to be caught, they slipped in shyly ; but a year had not passed before they went in boldly, in couples often, and in groups. They found it to be a good thing to go down town with some motet, fugue, or anthem warming their hearts, or to return home after a voiceless prayer in the Cathedral.

My point was gained. My object in building so low down in the city and so close to its business haunts was fully explained, and, in the eyes of all but the bigots, justified.

The Cathedral was never closed day or night the whole year round. It was not a refuge, though, for vagrants and tramps, or for fashionable loungers of either sex. The tramps were kindly turned away to some place where needed assistance could be had ; the fops and their giggling females were simply not admitted at all. The organist and his best pupils were permitted to play whenever the spirit moved them — a privilege seldom abused, but much coveted fby the more gifted and spiritual scholars, who desired to breathe out their deepest and most devout thoughts; and so it often happened that business and professional men and strangers, dropping in at odd

hours, beard the best music. Far into the night, sometimes, the belated worker or the reveller, passing the Cathedral, and feeling the pavement trembling under his feet, would go in and have his heart lifted unto God by the mighty organ, touched by the hand of one who could not find sleep until his inspired thought had found expression. The vergers and watchmen told me that the men who came in most frequently late at night, and who appeared to be most moved to penitence, were journalists and artists recovering from some bout at drinking. The overwhelming effect of the music upon their sinstricken souls, when they thought no one observed them, was said to be affecting in the extreme. That a thorough reformation from their unfortunate habits was ever accomplished may be doubted, because the outward intoxication by which they occasionally disgrace themselves is but the reflex of that inward intoxication, more or less habitual with men of their temperament, which has in it something almost divine. I have been told, moreover, that drinking men never get really penitent until they get sick of liquor; that what appears to be remorse is only nausea, and that penitence darts away as soon as the tone of the stomach and nerves is restored. I don't think this is altogether true ; on the contrary, I think somewhat of the penitence lingers and abides, is remembered in the soberest intervals, provokes a shudder of horror at past sin, and many a heartfelt prayer against a relapse. For all that, I can readily believe that a man with an absolutely gin -proof

; stomach might keep on a continuous spree during the whole of his lifetime.

The midnight services on the days set apart for rthe celebration of the birth of our Saviour and the incoming of the New Year \\ere as sublime as the art at my command enabled me to make them. If I should say that the crush on these occasions equaled that at St. Peter's when the Miserere is sung during Holy Week, I would be accused of exaggeration; therefore I will simply say that it was very great, and that many persons came from distant States, and some from over the sea, to enjoy the music. I do wish that I knew thorough bass from counterpoint, etc., sufficiently well to enable me to describe the soul-moving harmonies of the great -composers as rendered by the Cornelia Cathedral choir. [I had laid away a newspaper scrap, in which the description is finely and technically done by a

Our Saviour? Yes, a thousand times yes. The most besotted skeptic and scientist who counts his unbelief as righteousness (which it might be, but not too often is) must admit that millions have been saved in this life by faith in the Nazarene ; and if in this life, in the next as well, we may be sure. Nevertheless, let me say boldly that I have a good deal of hope for honest unbelievers. Hell, I take it, is a sparsely-settled country — much like that between Richmond and Tappahannock, or between Barksdale depot and Milton, N. C., in 1874. Here and there will be found a worldly-minded preacher sitting apart on a tussock of broom-straw, feeling a little chilly and lonesome, thinking himself an ill-used person, and wondering where the devil Darwin is. But the bulk of the inhabitants is made up of ingrained hypocrites, sellers of mean liquor, and the beaters of wives and other dumb beasts.

critic of the highest order, a Jewish gentleman of Hamburg, as I was told ; but like many other things, it is laid away so carefully that it might as well have been laid in the grave. If any one finds it after I am gone he will do me a great favor by inserting it just here. If not found, the reader must trust to his imagination, or better still, go to the Cathedral and hear for himself.]

In '98, or thereabouts, my granddaughter, Mary Davidson, was born, in the county of Rockbridge, and in her eighteenth year appeared as the leading soprano singer in our choir. She was as beautiful a -woman as ever lived, fair, blue-eyed and goldenhaired, as pure as light itself, and sweet as charity. A Sabbath peace and sanctity ("the Sabbaths of -eternity, one Sabbath deep and wide ") seemed to have passed into her being at birth, and her whole life was in accord with that holiness. No nun was ever more devoutly or wholly religious. Her piety and her existence were one. God was with her, in her, and about her ever; she was in this world and above it in some supernatural way, of which every one who saw her became instantly conscious. Her voice was literally the voice of a seraph — clear and sweet, but infinitely more than that — so thrilling and penetrating that all who heard it were at once awed as by a sound

coming immediately from the heavens. She sang sacred music as it ought to be sung. She gave all its meaning, allits power, all its pathos, without that

constant tremor '(tremolo) which from Tamberlik's

day to the present lias been so overdone as to dis-

figure and impair the effect of church-music everywhere. Some of her sustained notes, pure and unbroken as a sun-ray, went to the heart and soul with a force that transcends language. One felt as if touched by the wing of the angel of death — as if the other world was to be opened on the instant, and the whole nature and being shuddered and gasped to take in the larger life that was coming. But why attempt to tell about it ? They who listened remember and know all about it ; those who did not can never know.

By unanimous request the choir screen was taken down, so that all might see this beautiful woman while she was singing the holiest music. She did not object. A true woman, she loved to be loved and admired, but no man dared ever to address her. Her life was far beyond and above that. For two years she sang twice a day, and sometimes oftener, at the Cathedral ; the intervals between the choir services were spent in good works. She it was who so aided me in the " sky-surprises " heretofore alluded to. She died without sickness and without pain, and the mightiest concourse that ever went to Hollywood accompanied her to her grave. Such passionate grief 1 never saw exhibited by a whole people as was exhibited then. Her tomb, by far the most beautiful in Hollywood, attests the love the people bore her. For myself, I was glad that she died. My own end was near, my work was drawing to a close, and I did not wish to be long parted from her.

Virginia was then passing through that phase of folly, long before sneered out of Great Britain and the North, which is marked by the purchase of copies of so-called " old masters," wretched in conception and execution, and the utter neglect of works of merit done at home by native artists. I employed Elder, Fisher, and Slieppard, at twenty thousand dollars per annum each (and would have employed Myers at the same, had he not gone to a better land,) to work exclusively for me. The scenes, thelife, public and private, of the blacks and whites of Virginia as it was in the days of slavery, at least all that was left of that rapidly-disappearing life, I had put upon canvass. Woodward painted for me a dozen or so of charming landscapes, but was so sought after by Northern publishers that I could seldom get him to work for me. In addition to the genre pictures executed for me by the artists named above, there were a number of historical paintingsby the same, which I presented to the Virginia Historical Society. Nearly every one of these pictures commanded the approval of Mr. G. Watson James, but the critics, including myself, were not so lenient. I soon found that fixed work, done to order, how-

Art critic of the period, the only man connected with the Richmond press who could be induced to take any real interest in the works of our Virginia artists. This bold, and, indeed,, desperate young man fell at the head of his command as Captain of Hussars in the ill-starred attack upon the imperial city. I opposed the assault at the time as a piece of the most consummate folly ; but it was fitting that the rebellion should have ended just when and where it did.